With every major release of iOS and a new iPhone, Apple typically offers its official user guide online for free. What’s odd is that Apple doesn’t promote this resource at all, yet it’s still available. Each iOS device purchase comes with a little booklet to help familiarize a new customer with the basics of the device and iOS itself, but the full user guide is much more thorough and extensive.

Apple has an official user guide out for the iPhone 5 and iOS 6. The 365 page guide is available for anyone to view on the web, and Apple has also made it available for free in the iBookstore.

Companies like Google and Samsung aren’t exactly known for making the best anti-Apple propaganda, but the latest attack ad from Motorola has a particularly painful amount of truth to it. Everyone knows that Apple’s Maps app in iOS 6 sucks right now, and competitors are obviously going to latch onto any negative Apple press they can. That’s why Motorola’s ad says that the “DROID RAZRM M” (serious name) promises to not get you “iLost.”

While most of these Android ads have been pathetic attempts at calling out the iPhone’s flaws, I can’t really fault Motorola (who is owned by Google) for going with the Maps angle. It’s no surprise that none of the recent iPhone 5 ads mention Maps at all. If Apple doesn’t fix the negative inertia its generated with Maps in iOS 6, it could have a serious PR problem on its hands.

To Apple’s credit, iOS 6 Maps is being compared to Google Maps, a decade-old, matured platform that Google has invested thousands upon thousands of man hours into. Apple’s Maps will get there, it’s just going to take a little time.

Source: Android Central

Mmm coffee. I start my day with a triple Americano that I make at home (Nespresso FTW), but weekends I often make a pot of coffee. Maybe a nice French press pot or the classic auto-drip. There is one thing for sure, you can’t make a good pot of coffee if the coffee you buy is crap.

We all have our favorite coffees we buy as a treat to ourselves, how about finding and trying some new ones for a few months! How about a sample of four coffees a month for you to try? I’m craving another mug myself just thinking about this deal—Sample Delicious Coffee With MistoBox: Get 4 Micro-Roasted & Fresh Whole Bean Coffee Samples Delivered to Your Doorstep Every Month for 4 Months

JailbreakCon kicks off this weekend, and Cult of Mac will be there!

Scores of hackers are expected to gather for JailbreakCon in South San Francisco Conference Center on September 29th.

Jailbreaking, the process of circumventing Apple’s restrictions in iOS, has become a cultural phenomenon in recent years. In response to the mainstream interest in jailbreaking and everything it has to offer, JailbreakCon gathers the greatest hackers, developers, and users together in one place to learn and share new ideas.

Whether you’re a diehard jailbreaker or an interested onlooker, there’s going to be a lot of interesting stuff going on at JailbreakCon this year. The iPhone 5 and iOS 6 will be hot topics, and there’s a good chance we’ll hear news regarding a jailbreak for Apple’s newest smartphone.

Cult of Mac will be at JailbreakCon as an official media partner, so stay tuned for breaking coverage from the convention floor! Here’s what to expect:

As a new owner of an iPhone 5 that can take dictation, I’m still playing around with Siri and the various places and times that it makes sense to use my voice instead of the keyboard. Obviously, a crowded, quiet room is not the best place to speak to my iPhone, but in the car certainly is. It’s even better that I’m not texting with my fingers in the car, either, since that’s just plain dangerous. For a quick message, now, I’m gonna use the iOS 6 dictation feature.

Apple’s got an entire Knowledge Base article on how to best use dictation on your iOS 6 iPhone 5 or iPhone 4S, and as I read through it, it struck me how much easier it will be to respond to text messages should they come in while I’m not in a place to easily type a reply. One thing that surprised me was the recommendation to speak punctuation aloud.

Did you want to get an iPhone 5 on Friday, only to find out that they’d been sold out? Word is that Apple will start taking personal pickup orders starting at 10pm tonight. You’ll have another chance soon.

Ever since Google gobbled up the developers of Sparrow to put them to work on a Gmail app, the future of my favorite iOS email client has been in question, but the lack of iPhone 5 support was a particularly hard pill for me to swallow as I reviewed Apple’s latest handset.

Luckily, it appears that while Sparrow may not see many updates going forward, it will get iPhone 5 support, taking full advantage of the 1136 x 640 display.

Apple just released a new software update for the second and third generation Apple TV. The 5.1 update doesn’t include any major changes, but it does add support for Shared Photo Streams, search movie trailers, multiple iTunes account support, the ability to send audio from the Apple TV to AirPlay enabled speakers, and a few other minor improvements.

Here are the full release details from Apple:

Regular readers will know that I now do all my work using an iPad. Don’t worry, I’m not going to go over the technical details again.

But I will tell you about this excellent new lap desk I have. Better than that, I made it myself, so follow along to see how you can make your own.

Earlier this morning reports surfaced that a riot broke out at a Foxconn factory. Sadly, 10 people were killed in the riot while many more have been injured and taken to the hospital. The riot involved 2,000 Foxconn employees who were finally brought under control by 5,000 police officers after a few hours.

The amount of damage done during the riot was massive. Store windows were smashed. Cars were flipped over. We now have some pictures of the vast destruction caused by the rioters. Take a look:

The iPhone 5 has already come under fire for scratch complaints from customers, but that’s not the only problem new iPhone 5 owners are seeing so far. Some owners of the white iPhone 5 have taken to forums to complain about light leaking from the edges of their new iPhone.

It used to be that we carried spare batteries for our devices. Then Apple sealed its products’ cases shut and some of us complained. Loudly. Then we realized that carrying an external battery pack meant we didn’t have to power-down to swap out batteries, and that we could now pick and choose the perfect third-party option, and we all shut the hell up.

Which is my long-winded way of introducing the new Zaggsparq packs, a range of three battery packs tailored perfectly to your iCharging needs. As long as you don’t own an iPad 3, that is.

Humans have progressed a long way since the days of “Will It Blend?” Rather than just tossing an iPhone into a blender, we now have dozens of ways we like to watch the iPhone get destroyed on YouTube. After the iPhone 5 was released on Friday the internet went to work on different ways to destroy it – like having an NBA player dunk it, blowing it up in a microwave, or shooting it with a .50 caliber rifle.

Here are  the best iPhone 5 destruction videos:

Got an iPhone 5? Missing the Glif stand/tripod adapter/icon that fits your old, fat, ugly (not to mention slooowwww) iPhone 4/S like a (right-angled plastic) glove?

Don’t worry: by simply spending more money, you can secure yourself a brand new, elongated and slenderized version of the Glif for your new iPhone.

Earlier today, we reported on the Foxconn riot that broke out at the company’s Taiyuan, China, plant on Sunday evening. More than 2,000 employees were involved, and it took more than 5,000 police several hours officers to bring the disturbance under control.

Although many were injured, it was first thought that there were no deaths. Unfortunately the riot was much worse than initially reported, and ten workers have now been pronounced dead, according to reports.

Even though the iPhone 5 has only been in most owners’ pockets for four days, a lot of people have complained that the back plate on their iPhone 5 has a ton of scratches. Apple says the back of iPhone 5 is made of anodized 6000 series aluminum — the same material used in Apple notebooks — so it shouldn’t scratch that much, but if you’ve seen this picture, that doesn’t appear to be the case.

How’s the back of your iPhone 5 holding up? Does it have a few scars already, or has it been just fine? Are you going to get a case, or does a little wear and tear give your device some integrity? We want to know how your iPhone 5 has been doing so far so come chat with us about it in the Cult of Mac Forums.

Click here to go to the Cult of Mac forums and talk about whether your iPhone 5 is prone to scratches.

When Apple launched iCloud last year, it killed off MobileMe and provided paid subscribers with 20GB of free iCloud storage when they migrated to the new service. Most of us have been using that storage to back up our iOS devices, but like most good things, it’s coming to an end. The company has now begun emailing previous MobileMe customers to inform them that their free storage will be no more come September 30.

Photographer Dustin Curtis decided to put his new iPhone 5 up against his ~$4,000 Canon 5D MkIII SLR in a head-to-head shootout. The result? Clearly the Canon won, but the iPhone did surprisingly well.

Apple is said to be “aggressively” recruiting Google Maps employees in an effort to fix its highly criticized Maps service, according to an unnamed source “with connections on both teams.” The Cupertino company is reportedly using recruiters to attract individuals who have previously helped develop Google Maps, and many of them seem to be snapping up the opportunity to work at Apple.

Some years ago, I had a science-fiction idea. What if you could wear a camera and record your entire life? It would be small enough to hang around your neck or clip to your clothes. It would have enough memory and battery power to run all day, and it would record with a high enough resolution that you could “enhance” images to see close-up details.

Of course, this tech now exists. The latest iteration is this neat little Autographer, and in some ways it’s even better than my “invention.”

Do you find yourself getting lost in activities on your computer, forgetting to check the time, missing appointments, even? If you get lost in a video game or Facebook surfing session often, you might consider having your Mac announce the time out loud, like a town crier in the days of old.

All it takes is a quick trip into the System Preferences. That, and the ability to have the sound up on your Mac while you’re working at it. Otherwise, if a Mac speaks the time in a speaker-off situation, does it really exist? Wait. Scratch that.

iPhone 5 is selling like hot cakes covered in chocolate sprinkles.

Apple has announced that iPhone 5 sales surpassed a whopping five million units in just three days following the handset’s launch on Friday, September 21. Demand for the device has exceeded Apple’s initial supply, and while the majority of pre-orders have been shipping, many are scheduled to arrive in October.

A Foxconn factory in Taiyuan, China — where many of Apple’s devices are assembled before being shipped — has had to be closed after 2,000 workers became involved in a “mass disturbance” on Sunday evening.

The fight reportedly broke out after a personal quarrel involving workers from two different production lines, but messages posted to Chinese microblogging network Sina Weibo have claimed that the brawl was actually caused by factory guards beating Foxconn workers.

iOS jailbreak developer Ryan Petrich has successfully gotten the old iOS Maps app, which was powered by Google and boasted features like Street View and walking directions, running under iOS 6. The port is said to be unstable at the moment, but it’s working, and with a little more work, it could be available in all its glory to users with jailbroken iOS devices.

If you installed iOS 6 last week, you probably expected to be able to use your Starbucks rewards card in Passbook. For some unknown reason, Starbucks has not yet updated its iOS app with Passbook integration, but the company has confirmed that the update is coming “at the end of this month.”

Passbook, Apple’s approach to a virtual wallet in iOS 6, allows merchants to store coupons, tickets, passes and rewards cards in barcode form on an iOS device. Starbucks cardholders will be able to pay for their drinks and earn rewards with Passbook when the update comes out.